Marian McPartland, a jazz pianist and composer whose radio show "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" was National Public Radio's longest running and most widely carried jazz program, has died. She was 95. McPartland died of natural causes Tuesday night at her home in Port Washington, N.Y., NPR reported . One of the jazz world's most visible female instrumentalists, McPartland's highly personal style was rich with colorful harmonies and briskly swinging rhythms, enhanced by a love of bebop, while adapting smoothly to the many stylistic changes taking place in jazz over the course of a career spanning more than half a century.

Steinway Musical Instruments -- the venerable maker of pianos and other classical-music instruments -- is celebrating its 160th anniversary this year and has given itself the gift of a new owner. The company has agreed to be acquired for approximately $512 million by the New York hedge fund Paulson & Co. The bid topped a $438-million offer in July from Kohlberg & Co, the New York private-equity outfit. Paulson has agreed to acquire Steinway for $40 per share -- its ticker symbol is "LVB" for Ludwig van Beethoven -- in a move that will take the company private.

Pianos seem to be popular on Wall Street, as two financial firms face off in their quests to acquire Steinway Musical Instruments Inc. The Waltham, Mass. company - which in addition to its namesake pianos also makes Bach Stradivarius trumpets, Selmer Paris saxophones, Leblanc clarinets and more - said it has received a superior takeover bid to the deal announced in June with private equity firm Kohlberg & Co. The new bidder, an unnamed affiliate of a mysterious investment firm only described as managing $15 billion, is offering $38 a share for Steinway.

Southern California-raised Sean Chen, at 24 the first American to make the finals of the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since 1997, won the third place "crystal award" Sunday. As the 17-day competition ended at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, the six finalists played concertos accompanied by the Fort Worth Symphony led by Leonard Slatkin. Vadym Kholodenko, 26, of the Ukraine won the gold medal -- worth $50,000. Chen and the silver medalist, Beatrice Rana of Italy, each will get a $20,000 prize.

How do you punish Springfield's ultimate grade-school delinquent? A 10-year-old troublemaker who has been disciplined hundreds of times over the last 24 years? In Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons" on Fox, Bart is sentenced to the harshest form of pre-pubescent spirit crushing: classical-music lessons. The severity cannot be underestimated. After rejecting sliding-whistle lessons from Sideshow Mel, sitar instruction from Comicbook Guy and a theremin odyssey courtesy of Prof. Frink, Bart agrees to piano lessons after he espies the attractive Russian teacher Zhenya (the voice of Jane Krakowski)

It came with us always. First the old upright, then the Baldwin, then the Steinway grand, no matter how often we moved, or how far - she'd no more have left it behind than she'd have left me. There was, in those days, much shouting and storming about, the screeching of tires as my father sped off in the night. When I was 10, they split up for good, and we landed near Palo Alto, where my mother was left, a single mother in the suburbs, in her 40s, in the 1950s, a decade that did not take kindly to divorcees.

The famous first bars of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto summon four fortissimo horns to urgently blare a four-note descending figure and then leap. The full Los Angeles Philharmonic punctuated that leap Thursday night about as adamantly as I can recall having ever heard it. An industrial strength timpani thump added emphasis. Like a musical high five, the concerto's opening proclaimed Gustavo Dudamel's return to Walt Disney Concert Hall for a month, his first time back since his proud European and New York tour with the orchestra in March.

For fans of the piano trio, this bill could be considered something of a meeting of two heavyweights. An ambitious, expressive artist, Brad Mehldau's threesome was in typically remarkable form on two 2012 albums, and the Bad Plus has been pushing boundaries for years with an irreverent mix of head-turning covers and originals. A wild card will most likely be introduced in saxophonist Joshua Redman, who has collaborated with both ensembles in the past. Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Royce Hall, 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles.

When pianist, pedagogue and Arnold Schoenberg's former secretary Leonard Stein formed Piano Spheres in Los Angeles in 1994, he was providing exposure to four of the best and most imaginative students he had mentored. Gloria Cheng, Vicki Ray, Mark Robson and Susan Svrcek are now among the best, busiest and least dispensable pianists in Los Angeles, to say nothing of the most dedicated. Nine years after Stein's death, Piano Spheres still thrives and on Saturday celebrates the series' upcoming 20th anniversary by providing a rare opportunity to hear all four pianists on the same stage.

BERLIN - In a hotel in the embassy-heavy streets in the city's center, Lang Lang sits on a bright red couch, a modestly daring complement to the room's elaborate Bauhaus paneling. He has just come from a conference in Cannes where he gave a speech to the who's who of the music biz about classical music, social media and building music schools in China. The window is open and outside, a woman shouts enthusiastically into a megaphone. Her acolytes answer her calls with equal vim. Inside the normally happy-go-lucky, 30-year-old pianist is doing some protesting of his own. When he plays with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Hall in May, it will be Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, a piece second perhaps only to Grieg in the most-played concerto table.